brainpopfandomcom-20200223-history
Assembly Line/Transcript
Transcript Text reads: The Mysteries of Life with Tim and Moby Tim and Moby are relaxing on the grass as birds chirp in the trees. Moby makes a paper airplane out of a letter and throws it at Tim. TIM: Hey. Tim reads from the typed letter. TIM: Dear Tim and Moby, What is the assembly line? From, Dakota. The assembly line is a system that's used a lot for mass production in factories. Come on, Moby. I've got an idea. Moby and Tim ride a scooter to the Widget Factory. An animation shows robots and a robotic arm working in the factory. TIM: We used to make widgets one by one. Tim and Moby are wearing protective glasses and aprons. TIM: The word widget, by the way, is a term that economists used to describe any device or contraption they're using in an example. Sort of like gizmo or gadget. Anyway, turns out, it's a lot quicker to make a widget when you split the job into parts and assign a worker to each of them. A conveyer belt carries the widgets from station to station. An animation shows a worker attaching pieces of widgets together as they roll by on a conveyer belt. TIM: Each person on the line has a different job to do. One worker assembles the parts, another welds them together, and a third pounds them flat. An animation shows a worker welding the widgets together as they roll by on the conveyer belt. Then an android robot pounds the widgets. TIM: So all the workers help to make all the widgets. MOBY: Beep. TIM: That's right, Moby. Robots work on the assembly line, too. These industrial robots get the most boring jobs on the line. They're fast, accurate, and they never need a break. An animation shows a robot stamping widgets on the conveyer belt. TIM: Using an assembly line, the factory can produce more widgets each day than if they had each worker making widgets one by one. And the more widgets the factory can produce, the less they'll cost in stores. An animation shows a single worker making an entire widget by himself. TIM: The other good thing about the assembly line is all the widgets come out looking exactly the same. The assembly line came out of the Industrial Revolution, a major period of technological advances beginning in the 18th century. Inventions like the steam engine made the manufacture of hardware, cloth, and even food more efficient. Images show a conveyer belt, laptop, cloth, and a box of popcorn. TIM: In 1901, the Olds Motor Vehicle Company became the first to mass produce cars. An animation shows a robot welding the doors on cars. TIM: Twelve years later, Henry Ford perfected the process, using conveyer belts to crank out a new car in just over an hour and a half. An image shows Henry Ford and a car made in 1913. TIM: Nowadays, almost all cars, trucks, and tractors are made on assembly lines. In fact, assembly lines churn out pretty much every consumer product in your home, from your computer to your sneakers! Come on, Moby, we should be getting home. Uh, Moby? Moby is pounding widgets on the conveyer belt while the android worker sips lemonade. Category:BrainPOP Transcripts